


All Our Yesterdays

by Ammaren (Fjallsarlon)



Category: To The Moon (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Gen, brine - Freeform, non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 21:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fjallsarlon/pseuds/Ammaren
Summary: He's cleaned up neatly after himself, and Eva wonders if that is a sign of how things are going to be. Nonlinear. Eva remembers. Gift for ravenousbee during the Sigcret Santa Fic Exchange.





	All Our Yesterdays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravenousbee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenousbee/gifts).



"What can a flame remember? If it remembers a little less than necessary, it goes out; if it remembers a little more than is necessary, it goes out. If only it could teach us, while it burns, to remember correctly." –George Seferis, quoted in  _Tigana_ , Guy Gavriel Kay

* * *

The house is—not unpleasantly—cool this night, and with the balcony door left just slightly ajar, Eva can feel the crispness drift in with the scent of the light rain, falling.

Neil is in the hallway pulling his jacket on. She recognises it: he wore it the weekend they drove out to the coast, to watch the waves surge in against the stark cliffs, to watch the ravages of sea and time on the rugged edges of the Earth.

They sat on the grass, some distance from where the cliff dropped off abruptly into emptiness and listened to the relentless pounding of the ocean against rock. Salt spray drifted upwards through the air; she inhaled the strong scent of brine.

His jacket was heavy canvas, well-worn and solid, and a dark, non-descript brown. She felt the cloth rasp against her skin as he shifted position, arm still comfortably about her.

Some things, at least, didn't change.

"You're leaving?"

He cocks an eyebrow at her. "It's late. I should be going."

He hates the rain. She knows this.

"It's raining," Eva says.

"Yeah, I kinda notice that," he replies.

"Do you want to stay, just sleep over, for the night?"

She almost thinks he'll say no as he studies her, hands in his jacket pockets. For several long moments measured only in heartbeats, she thinks Neil will tell her he's fine, he's getting a cab, except that she finally recognises that marginal slump of his shoulders and knows it for the surrender it is.

"Yeah," Neil says, at last. "Okay."

It's been months since they broke up. It wasn't bad, or ugly, or a trainwreck or anything; it's just messy as most of these human matters are, and maybe a little too complicated, and Eva's still trying to figure out where she wants her boundaries drawn.

He shrugs out of his jacket again, hangs it back on the coat-stand. He always picks that particular hook, Eva remembers. Neil is nothing, if not predictable.

* * *

It's surprising how much Neil has tangled himself into the threads of her life. Eva doesn't sleep in; she's a morning person, and she knows exactly what a heavy sleeper Neil can be, but by the time she wakes up, the house is empty. The pillows beside her are still flattened; she imagines a trace of his warmth lingering on the sheets, that if she breathes in carefully, she can still make out his scent, like memory, like a ghost.

She pads through the corridors of her home, illuminated by the soft morning light. She's hung up the framed photo of both of them at the summer festival; grinning fiercely at the camera, bottles of cold beer in hand. She remembers there were chilli-rubbed barbecue ribs with espresso sauce; it's why Neil'd dragged her down in the first place, and Eva had agreed.

There; a few Polaroids from the infamous tofu party, and the waterfront festival, with both of them posing with a great view of the rubber duck float, Neil grinning goofily, Eva looking unimpressed. She can't remember who snapped it; a kind passer-by, perhaps.

The pale ceramic figure of a rabbit sits on a shelf, one celadon ear chipped from rough handling. She remembers the jumble sale they picked the rabbit up from; months after the story of Johnny Wyles and River Wyles reached its end amongst the starry heavens. Neil laughs and points out the rabbit to her, and she finds herself somehow drawn to it; running her fingers along the smooth glazed surface. The rabbit is waving a paw, and seems strangely peaceful.

They eventually leave the jumble sale with the rabbit carefully-wrapped in old newspapers, and it finds a place on Eva's shelf. She remembers, too, the brass pocket watch Neil acquires from the same sale, with a stylised moon stamped into the battered metal cover. It had been a surprise, and she'd watched as puzzlement gave way to delight when he unwrapped his gift.

She still has some of his shirts in her closet, untouched, and she closes the door firmly on those. Her plants have been freshly watered, just the right amount, and the TARDIS watering can she'd appropriated from Neil and never returned is upended so it doesn't collect water. She passes the rhododendrons and the basil; the days are still too chilly for the lemongrass, but the seeds are neatly-labelled and stored away for when the warmth steals back into the world.

Some days, the house seems too large for her, and too full of ghosts, echoing down the corridors. She remembers a gentle kiss by the window-seat and pauses there for a moment, allowing her fingers to trail on the tasselled cushions. These covers were a gift from Taima McMillan, who was in a habit of showering her colleagues with knitted presents, and she still remembers Neil scoffing at the mug cosy Taima had made him.

In the kitchen, she finds a thermos of coffee, still warm to the touch. She undoes the lid and breathes in the steaming fragrance of hot, freshly-brewed coffee with gratitude. There's almost as much milk as coffee, just the way she likes it. There's no note, but a covered plate with a mushroom-and-cheese-and-pickles panini sits on the glass surface of her dining table, with a smiley face scrawled on the accompanying paper napkin in dark Sharpie ink.

There are no words left behind; none at all, but she knows, is used to discerning meaning from between the lines of gestures like these, and he doesn't need them. The coffee pot has been cleaned out, the used grounds emptied into the dustbin. The skillet is left to dry on the rack. He's cleaned up neatly after himself, and Eva wonders if that is a sign of how things are going to be.

* * *

It's been yet another all-nighter, and Eva is utterly knackered. Neil is driving, and she wishes there was something else other than half-stale cookies in the glove box. This, Eva resolves to herself, is the last time she's letting Neil take care of their emergency snack stash.

She munches on the cookies anyway, because she's hungry, and all-nighters are the worst, and it's only the caffeine and the sugar and the weary, satisfied glow of having successfully helped another patient that's fending off the crankiness.

She's never dealt well with late nights, or sleep deprivation. It's one of the parts of the job Eva dislikes intensely. Neil though; he's a regular night owl, and sometimes, Eva quietly resents him for it.

"Another happy ending, huh?" Neil says.

Eva blinks out of a drowsy half-doze. "Huh?"

He looks over at her. "Get some rest," he says, quietly.

"Mm," Eva murmurs, but for all she's bone-weary, for all she's comfortable, with a Sigur Rós album playing on the car's radio and her sweater draped over her lap as a makeshift blanket, she can't quite make the drift from dozing to actual slumber. Perhaps it's the caffeine. Perhaps it's the moonlight shining like ice through the window, glinting silver off the reflective surface of Neil's glasses.

She can still make out the concern in those pale grey eyes, like rime, like hoarfrost. She can read the tension in his jaw and the set of his shoulders and wonders if this is something they can give voice to.

"Not gonna?"

"Maybe later," Eva says, and allows her eyes to drift shut again and focuses on the murmur of the vocals and beneath it all, the sound and feel of her own quiet breathing.

You never really know what people will ask for; what shape their desires will take. She remembers an analogy Neil used once, a very long time ago, when they'd first begun, talking the patient's anxious family through what they were going to do.  _Memory is like water_ , he'd said, back then,  _and like water, it takes on the shape of its container. So you have memory, and you have desire—we transfer the desire, and the memory flows into the container and assumes that same shape._

She remembers the gestures he makes then, long clever fingers now signing fluidly, now crisp and sharp like the edges of a box.

Will Durand's memories were bright, composed of loose impressionistic brush-strokes and saturated with a quiet longing that made something in Eva's gut and chest hurt. Memory traversal gives you an unprecedented glimpse into someone's inner world, and sometimes, you need distance, because it hurts too much to see your own mistakes, your own desires, your own feelings on display in a not-quite-stranger's life.

Here in the car, as they drive back home, though, Eva feels her shield of hardened cynicism begin to crack and shatter.

"You think it was doomed, from the start?" she asks, and she isn't quite sure  _why_  she's asking. Perhaps part of her wants desperately to believe, even as the part of Eva that has seen more than enough of the world; the part of Eva that knows so much better than to dream and to believe and to hope, which has its feet nailed firmly to the ground is disinclined to build sandcastles in the sky.

She can all but hear his shrug in the tone of his voice. "Dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. Does it matter, though?"

Perhaps it doesn't, Eva concedes, quietly. Will Durand is dead, and so is the old flame they drove out to resurrect, for a time, if only in memories. His secret lies in the grave with him, and neither the wife nor the daughter know the single, desperate, poisonous wish, heavy with guilt and desire, that lurks within Eva's brain, gleaming like a juicy red apple, with promise.

"Don't give me that," she replies. "You were invested."

"Was not," Neil says. A few moments pass before he adds, "And if I was, what of it?"

"He never had a chance, did he?" She imagines—remembers, really—everything that memory-tracing of Will had said, confessed, rather, to the two of them, in white coats, almost like priest's cassocks. Remembers the two of them—Will and Kenneth—embracing, bending towards each other as leaves of grass in a breeze; as if each other held the answers to life and the mysteries of the universe.

Remembers Will's awkward, stumbling words—half-declaration, half-confession—and almost expects the snide remark from Neil, except that there's something thoughtful in those grey eyes of his, and it takes long moments and prompting before he manages something suitably biting about how he's going to hurl.

"All this trouble, for one small regret. And nothing changed; Kenneth Tsang died young. It's in the public records. And he still married Andrea, and they still divorced. Almost nothing changed at all."

When Neil says nothing at all, Eva cracks open an eye, realising he's frowning at the road. "What?"

"I'm just surprised, that's all. You're always the one saying not to get too attached to the patient. Well, we did our job. We fulfilled the contract. Great work, let's give ourselves a pat on the back and go out to the pub." He arches an eyebrow. "What else is there?"

"You don't mean that."

"You seem to know me so well, dumpling," he says, but there's something grim in those cheerful words, and sometimes Eva wonders why they do this; why they can't say what they mean, why they spend hours upon hours cutting each other up on the sharp edges of their words.

"You don't feel Will deserved better?" she asks, and this time, it's a challenge.

Neil lets out a long sigh. "Who doesn't?" he concedes, at last. "We all want to believe in love, don't we? We all desperately want to believe that there's some connection we can form that will survive of us, that can beat back just about everything that's dark and crappy and shitty about this world, that can shine a light, that will make everything better. Well, guess what, dumpling—sometimes love isn't enough, and sometimes it isn't fair, and you know it, and I know it. Maybe Will knew it too. For all his regrets, for all he  _wanted_  to know what would happen if he'd just had the courage to say those words, he never really, truly believed it could work out, and there's nothing to be done about that."

"Mmhmm," Eva says. Nothing else. But still, that niggling itch in her chest won't quite go away and she can't help but think about doubts and desire and that stubborn, stubborn hope, like the tiny, flickering flame of a candle deep within; fragile enough she can't see how it could possibly survive the darkness and the cold.

But it does. And perhaps that's the human condition: this constant war of hope—not even love, just hope—against the grim realities and the mud and the dust and the tumult and clamour of the world.

She sees them again, two figures, embracing—desperately, almost—before the tides and the currents of the world tore them apart. They can't stay that way; they can't stay together. Nothing is saved forever, and nothing stays. She knows that. Will knew it, too. But for that brief moment before the storms and the tide and the raging currents—for that brief moment, they completed each other, and that tiny candle flame of hope within her flares to life again, illuminating the emptiness she carries inside.

Neil reaches out and silences the radio and the last strains of music vanishes abruptly. The hush descends upon them, all at once.

He's guarded, this night; so guarded, so careful, and Eva almost thinks she understands why. Almost wonders if she wants to try building a bridge with words.

"You ever wonder, though?" she asks.

"About?"

She swallows, hard. Feels the words echo in the hollow space within her rib-cage, feels the swift beats of her heart; like a caged bird. Like hope. "Us."

Silence.

Neil grips the steering wheel. "What of it?" he asks, tonelessly.

"You think it'd ever work?"

He shrugs, a gesture both deliberate and casual, and she remembers how easily he frustrates her, how readily he brings a reluctant smile to her face by his presence alone; how she found the answers soon enough, even though she has never wanted to ask the question.

In a way, Eva Rosalene has always been afraid of a great many things.

"Dunno," Neil says, at last. "Maybe. Maybe not. You getting adventurous on me, dumpling?"

"Worth a shot, don't you think?"

The car comes to a halt as Neil pulls up along the shoulder of the road. He's looking at her, now, ash-grey eyes intent, and she isn't at all sure how to read his expression; has always wondered what it would be like, for him to look at her this way, as if she were the only thing in existence, as if she were the sole focus of his attention.

"Let me get this straight," Neil says. "You, Eva, are asking me if I think—if I think we could work out?"

"Yes."

"You're serious."

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

The corners of his mouth tilt in a crooked smile. "Guess not," he says, and then, "May I?" She isn't sure which of them moves first, but then he looses the seatbelt and then they're leaning in towards each other, and then Neil makes a disgruntled sound and shifts his glasses out of the way.

His answer isn't verbal; it's a whisper of his lips meeting hers, it's the strange warmth racing through her veins, the acceleration of her heart, the way she meets him and the way she craves more, more of him, more of his comfortable presence, just more.

And then it's just the two of them, two lonely people in the world, and for a moment—and then the moment after, and then the moment after that—the world is just a little less lonely; a single candle shining fiercely against the cold and the dark.

* * *

Eva picks her way through the bustling corridors of the hospital, avoiding gurneys and carts. All that white is blindingly sterile, and she swears not even the occasional air fresheners she sights can blunt the edge of the strong whiff of disinfectant that lingers throughout.

She almost hesitates before the door, but then sighs, and pushes it open.

Neil is lying in the bed, painfully thin; gaunt enough that his cheekbones are sharp and prominent. He's connected to more machines than Eva usually sees in a patient's home and there are hollows under his eyes but he smiles faintly when she enters, and in that moment, he is briefly transfigured.

"Eva! Come to pay me a visit?"

"Mmhmm," Eva says, and notices with a pang that there's the collective fruit basket from all of Sigmund sitting on a side-table, and a few other cards conveying well-wishes, and nothing. She knows, of course, of Neil's troubled relationship with his parents, and she knows that buried deep lies pain and a thousand secrets that he won't ever tell even her. "Honestly, I had a spare moment between patients. Logan's downstairs, waiting."

"Heh. He doesn't want to come up?"

Eva shakes her head. In truth, she's—almost—grateful for it. There's so much she wants to say, that she can't quite seem to give voice to. As much as she genuinely likes Logan, she can't help but feel that it would only have been more awkward with Logan around, and perhaps Logan had sensed that too, and tactfully excused himself.

They weren't the most discreet, after all, and back when they were together, Robert had raised an eyebrow and read them the lecture on dating one's co-workers but since their branch of Sigmund was relatively small, they'd been allowed to get away with it.

She takes a seat; pulls it up by his bed, and notices that he's still holding the battered pocket watch in his hand. "You kept it," says Eva, and she wonders why she's surprised.

"I keep everything," Neil says, and their eyes meet, and in that moment, Eva feels the weight of everything that has happened between them pressing down on her heart, and the old not-quite pain surges up to meet it.

She pulls out the dog-eared book from her purse, and Neil winces. "Seriously, Eva, you need to keep your books in better condition," he murmurs. "The fact that you do this physically pains me." She does know that; she knows he carefully shrink-wraps each of his books and comic books and manga, and God help anyone who so much as cracks them open at more than a forty-five degree angle.

For Eva, though: her father had taught her that books were meant to be well-loved and well-used, and this marks yet another of their many differences.

"Hush, you," Eva replies. "I got it from a second-hand bookstore and I  _like_  it, alright?"

"Mm," Neil says. "You going to read to me, then?"

"Do you want me to?"

It's an old, old book, barely held together by the judicious application of duct-tape, but it's a good one, and she remembers many nights, tucked up in bed, the glow-in-the-dark jellyfish and starfish swimming along her walls and ceiling, and her father sitting by her bed, reading in that deep, rich voice, like a dark plum brandy, like a heady espresso.

"This is the one you talked about, isn't it? The one you loved—the one your father always read to you."

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, it is."

He flashes her that crooked smile, the one that still tugs at her heart as if a hook has been embedded there, that reminds her that whatever it was that they had, it's still there, buried beneath layers and layers of memory and bad decisions and human messiness. "Read it to me, then."

She turns to the first page, and clears her throat, and begins. "Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called  _True Stories from Nature_ , about the primeval forest…"

She steals a glance at him, several pages in. His eyes are closed, and his breathing is steady. "Don't stop on my account," he drawls. "I'm hardly asleep yet. Just…"

"Resting your eyes?" Eva asks, a tad sardonically.

"I'll have to remember that one. No, hardly. I just like listening to the sound of your voice. It makes me feel…." he sighs, quietly. "Peaceful, I suppose. It's a good feeling."

"Mm," Eva says, noncommittally. She looks over at him; completely still, with his eyes closed, she can almost believe it was an ordinary morning, in bed. Remembers what it was like, her hand resting on the small of his back; sprawled on opposite sides of the bed, but close enough to touch. Close enough to gaze into each other's eyes. His fingers gently tucking a curl of hair behind her ear.

"You gonna continue?" Neil asks, eventually.

"Oh, yeah, I just…" she stops herself, and her finger finds the abandoned line on the page, tracing it out word by word. "He bent his head over the drawing.  _"Not so small that-Look! He has gone to sleep…"_  And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince."

By the end of the book, his breathing has deepened into true slumber. Eva looks over at him, memorising every single thing of his sleeping form, watching the way the dying light from the window falls gently over him, while most of the room is cast into orange-hued shadows. She bends over him, and—gently, so as to not awaken him—tugs on the blankets until he's properly covered. The pocket watch has fallen from his grasp; she picks it up and leaves it on the bedside table.

She bends over, and, after a moment's hesitation, presses a feather-soft kiss to his forehead, smoothing away the lines of pain and exhaustion.

Then, and only then, Eva takes her leave.

She doesn't look back.

* * *

It's a warm, lazy afternoon, and Eva wants nothing more than to bask in the sunlight and doze off. Life has other plans, though, and she's re-reading the assigned textbook on the neuroscience of memory and trying not to fall asleep.

With a none-too-quiet  _oomph_ , someone flops down on the grass beside her, sprawled inelegantly. "Whatcha reading?" Neil asks, without fanfare.

"Hello to you too," Eva informs him. She holds out the textbook to him, and it's only after he squints at the letters on the cover realises he can barely read it, upside down. "Here." She flips it about.

"Jones and Bridges on the neuroscience of memory, huh?" Neil reads aloud. "Cool."

"You don't even take this class," she points out.

"Yeah, well," Neil brushes off that comment with an artless shrug. "Might be thinking the better of it, actually." She looks over at him, curious. It's been months since Neil emerged from that self-destructive spiral, and the dark circles around his eyes have disappeared. He's stopped skipping meals, too, which is a relief. As much as Eva would like to consider them friends, micro-managing Neil's sleep patterns and eating habits runs just a tad too close to mothering him for her to feel entirely at ease with it.

He'd needed it, though. He'd needed someone to stop him, someone to be there before he hit rock bottom, and there'd been no one else, and she cared, she just knew you couldn't save someone if they didn't save themselves first.

He'd broken down, during one late night study session, and she'd firmly closed both of their books and told him they were going to get ice cream. No questions asked, no argument. And they did. Ice cream didn't make everything better, but for those few hours, Neil had revealed a little more than she'd usually heard from him.

It was something to do with his grandfather, he'd explained, and his grandfather'd never been too healthy of late, only that his grandfather had passed away in the past week but it was finals week, and his parents hadn't wanted him distracted and so they'd concealed it from him, until now it was too late.

She'd listened patiently; she couldn't bear the guilt and the sorrow  _for_  him, but she could listen—with compassion—and she could be there  _with_  him, and perhaps that helped, as inadequate as it seemed. Perhaps that was what they needed, in this world.

They'd laughed, into the night, and they'd cracked bad jokes and they'd speculated about how the anime they were both currently following was going to end, and Neil'd confided in her that the hurt and the pain hadn't quite gone away, but some of it had faded in intensity.

"Good," said Eva, and she sincerely meant it. "I'm glad, Neil."

She'd almost failed the exam the next day, but that was all right: she'd scored well on most major assignments, and she didn't need that credit. And sometimes, you had to know what was more important, and that certainly hadn't been the organic chemistry exam.

"Why?" Eva asks, belatedly, dragging herself out of her thoughts. "Why're you thinking the better of it?"

"Memory reconstruction," Neil explains. "I was looking up some of the materials they left behind at the career fair, and the Institute's almost always looking for people in the right disciplines." He waves a hand in a vague gesture. "You know. Engineering, neuroscience, psychology, that sort of thing…" Which means that it's something both of them could apply for, only Eva's still got her heart set on marine biology graduate programmes, even though her head knows that funding is extremely difficult to secure, and good luck on the job market after graduation.

"You interested, then?"

"Why not? They're doing interesting things, you know. And…" he is silent for a time, and Eva almost wonders if he isn't going to continue. But then he does. "It's not changing the world. But you're comforting the dying, and helping them to pass on without regrets. That seems like something worth doing."

The words strike something inside of Eva; it's as if she's a tuning fork and Neil's words have hit her just the right way and she feels them resonating with the emptiness she carries within. She wonders what exactly it'd be like, to do something so profoundly meaningful, to make  _something_  of her life. She finds herself thinking of Neil's grandfather, though they've never met—though her own grandparents have died before she was born—and wonders if this decision is born from Neil's regret; if it's his way of atoning.

She wonders if this is a way for her too; a way to strike free of the long shadow cast by her sister.

"I guess," Eva hedges. "You applying then?" She's all too aware of how graduate schools cost money, and even a specialised vocational school like the Institute probably charges a great deal for education.

Neil nods. "There's all sorts of funding and scholarships available. It's a new field, and they only expect it to grow in the next couple of years," he tells her, matter-of-factly, as if he's already sussed out where her worries might be stemming from. "I figure it's worth a shot, right? You never know whether they'll say yes."

"Mm. But you want this."

He hesitates.

"Yeah," Neil says, at last, completely serious. "Yeah, I really do, Eva."

"Best of luck, then," Eva says. "They'd have to be crazy to not want you."

He smirks. "Yeah, I know, right? The one and only glorious Dr. Lorenzo von Matterhorn—"

She lightly prods his side with her foot. "That's a bad line, and you know it. Neil Patrick Harris pulls it off better."

He squirms away from her foot. "Eh, we share the same name, after all. You applying?"

Eva blinks, taken aback by the sudden change in topic. "What?"

"You do neuroscience. I know you like the memory class—you've been telling me all about it over the past weeks. And, I dunno, I guess I just thought that this whole memory reconstruction thing sounded like a you thing. Don't ask me to explain, it just kinda…felt right, I guess?"

Eva snorts. "Whatever you do, don't go into career counselling."

"Heard and noted. Well, so are you?"

"Maybe," says Eva.

* * *

The funeral takes place on a gusty autumn day, the wind stirring the fallen piles of ochre and amber and sullen red leaves with a dry whisper. Eva catches one as it drifts lightly on the breeze, and remembers the leaf Neil had caught, that day, years ago, and pressed between the pages of one of her old journals. That was a simple journal; nothing as indulgent as her current one, with a worn brown cardboard cover and sprigs of rosemary doodled on that in deep emerald ink.

The afternoon sunlight is golden, painfully golden, setting the trees ablaze, and something prickles in her eyes as the celebrant reads from a poem by Robert Frost. Memory is strong here, stirring, even as she looks at all the deep golds around her, even as she thinks she can almost hear Neil reading it to her; shyly, hesitantly, gaining confidence towards the end.

"I didn't know you read," she'd said then.

He'd rolled his rain-grey eyes, even as he snapped the notebook shut. "Please, Eva, we went to the same high school, we both survived Mr. Nair's literature classes, and you either emerge  _educated and literate_ , or not at all, so help me God." No threads of grey in his hair, back then, though all things considered, he's died so young.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, well," Neil had said, with a shrug. "Didn't expect you to take that seriously. Of course I read, sometimes." He raised an eyebrow. "I just don't do it as much as I'd like to. There's a lot of other things I'd like to do with my time, you know."

"Like?"

Neil shrugs again. He doesn't say anything, and lying back on the grass, staring up at the clear, clean blue of the sky overhead and the flock of birds winging their way elsewhere, Eva isn't minded to press the issue.

Someone else delivers the eulogy—surprisingly or otherwise, they'd settled on Robert, and Eva is grateful; she's not sure that everything that matters, everything of significance that she knows about Neil can be condensed somehow into a single eulogy, into a few short paragraphs of grief and celebration, and isn't that strange, that eulogies celebrate life, yet the sharp, haunting notes of grief are what overshadows it all, rising and falling again like the lyre-music sweet Orpheus played for Eurydice.

She half-wonders if Neil would turn in his grave to hear all the kind words that Robert is now speaking about him, but—and this is the truth—Robert Lin has always been a  _fair_  man, if demanding, and of late, the aggression and hostility between Neil and Robert has faded into a wary but abiding mutual respect.

There's a story there, Eva is certain of it. But she's never been privy to it.

She's already said her goodbyes; at the hospital, and then earlier, when they first broke up, and then again, just before the funeral proper, but still, this feels like a caesura, like a semi-colon, only the break is sharp and permanent and jutting and nothing will ever continue again, quite as it is.

Is this grief? Eva doesn't know. She remembers kneeling on the grass with Traci, burying their pet hamster in the rose garden, but the accompanying emotions are faded and off-colour like a poorly-preserved photograph. She'd expected to  _feel_  something, not the fierce, stabbing ache in her chest, not the knife-like pain of drawing breath, not the echoing emptiness within, crusted with a layer of ice.

She watches as they put the first handfuls of dry earth over the coffin and someone puts a hand on her shoulder, and of everyone, it's Logan.

He doesn't say anything. Neither does Eva.

* * *

Eva is barely holding back a yawn, even as she slams her biology textbook shut with a satisfying  _thud_  and begins to pack all her study notes back into her bag.

"Long day?" he asks, slipping into the empty seat opposite her. Eva looks up from the task of stacking her notes in chapter-and-unit order.

"Hey," Neil says, and smiles crookedly. Even at this age, he's already acquired those reflective glasses that will follow him through the rest of his life, though they never quite hide the thoughtful grey of his eyes. "Looks like you've been working hard." He keeps his voice down to a quiet whisper. By now, they've both learned that crossing the librarian will get them thrown out on their sorry asses faster than they can say, 'Ouch.'

"I  _like_  biology," Eva informs him, and it's true. It helps that she knows what she wants, that she's got her life planned out before her already, and as much as she loves her older sister, she's frankly grateful that Traci's already done the impossible task of fulfilling their parents' expectations. Now, all Eva has to do is whatever she wants. Something sufficiently different from Traci's path to law school, at least. She knows that much. Law school isn't for her.

Neil doesn't bother to hide his shudder. "Better you than me," he drawls, slouching back in the chair and dumping his backpack onto the floor by the legs of his chair. "I'd take physics over biology any day."

There's something about Neil that Eva, quite frankly, admires. Perhaps it's his energy, his confidence; perhaps it's the way that Neil never quite seems to care about what anyone else thinks. He simply does what he wants. She can only imagine her parents' reaction if she told them she wanted to drop music classes.

Except when it comes to girls, she supposes. But everyone in high school seems to be going quite a bit daft about girls or boys, and Eva guesses even Neil Watts isn't immune to trailing awkwardly around Maylene or Fiona, jostling for their attention, struggling to ask them out.

She's just thankful Neil isn't like that around her. She's not quite certain she thinks of him that way, and this business of dating seems like too much effort right now, and Eva knows what she wants, but she's come to think of Neil as a friend, and the idea of him getting awkward around her might be just a little more than she can bear.

"So, what're you doing here?"

Neil smirks, and does a decent job of looking like the cat that has just eaten the cream. "Guess who scored a date with Maylene."

"You have got to be—oh, alright," Eva grumbles, pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand. For some reason, there's something about this entire situation that sits uneasily with her; not quite butterflies in her stomach. Maybe she's just got indigestion. "And you felt the need to tell me this, why?"

For a moment, his expression wavers, and she thinks she sees vulnerability; insecurity, even, and she feels like she's been unnecessarily harsh, but then Neil just does something with the emotion—maybe he shoves it deep down, inside—because that smile returns, and he says, "Gee, I dunno, any hints on what to do on a date with the hottest girl in our class?"

She shrugs. For some reason, she just doesn't feel like having this conversation right now. "God, Neil, it's not that difficult. Treat her like a human being—treat her like you'd treat me, or Brian, or anyone else. It's basic decency and courtesy. That's about it."

She shoves the last couple of notebooks into her bag and tells herself it's just that she  _likes_  talking to Neil, just not when he's like this. There's something that sits ill at ease with Eva about this sort of vulnerability, about Neil actually  _caring_  about what someone else thinks, about him joining the crowd of desperate teenage boys, all flush with hormones, milling about some of the most attractive girls in their year.

She draws in a deep breath, and tries to let out her irritation.

"You're frustrated," he says, and all traces of that smugness have vanished and there's only concern now, in those pale grey eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Eva says. She packs up her stationery too, zips up her pencil case and sticks that into her bag. She only half-feigns that yawn. "It's been a long day, and staring at the endocrine system all day makes me cranky."

"Tell you what," Neil says. "Let's go get ice cream."

"I have to go home; I'm expected for dinner."

"Half an hour won't kill you," he wheedles. "You know your parents are chill about this sort of thing. And I'm buying."

She doesn't know at that time that money is tight; that Neil works hours at the grill flipping burgers to make some spare cash and not all of that goes into his pocket. She doesn't know that he manages to score decent grades in spite of all that; that he, too, has some idea of what he wants, he's just good at concealing that sharply-honed focus.

"Oh, alright then," says Eva, and gracefully surrenders.

* * *

Eva carries on, because life carries on.

That battered pocket watch finds its way onto her shelf, next to the celadon rabbit. Walking through her house is like being haunted by a hundred ghosts, only each ghost is a memory. She's thought that she's exhausted her capacity for grief in the aftermath of their break up; only then it wasn't quite grief but a mutual tiredness, a mutual acknowledgement that despite their shared history, in the end, they weren't quite right for each other.

Or perhaps they had once been, but somehow, time had worn away edges and sharpened others and they no longer fit each other as they once had. And there was nothing wrong with that, either.

She leaves his shirts in the closet; not because she is turning it into a shrine, not because it feels like a desecration to touch them, not because she wants to preserve the illusion of hope; the possibility of return, but simply because she doesn't quite wear shirts with all sorts of geeky quotes printed across them. That's Neil's style, and not quite hers.

She sits by the window-seat and watches the dust motes dance in the sunlight and remembers a kiss and laughter, and while the act of remembering is laced through with sorrow, there's also acceptance there: this happened. This ended. There is nothing wrong with that.

She holds on to the memories of happier days, of joy, and breathes until the pain fades, just a little, until that white-knuckled grip on her lungs and heart loosens up, if only a fraction, until she can breathe again and it only hurts a tiny bit.

Traci prints poems on grief and acceptance and loss; Eva frames them on her walls and reads them to herself and remembers Neil's voice; shy and halting, and what it felt like to hold each other and drift off to sleep.

The pain colours everything in Eva's life with wistful, soft tones of blue and grey, but she allows it to fade to a gentle murmur in the backdrop because life goes on, and she still laughs at Logan's jokes, still smiles in tired satisfaction when they successfully fulfil a patient's wish, still enjoys the peace of gardening with dirt against her fingers.

She finds—acquires, wins—a quiet sort of peace, establishes her own balance once again.

And, lying on her bed, staring up at the familiar ceiling in the darkness before sleep claims her, Eva Rosalene smiles and remembers and loves and lets go.

* * *

It's a clear, beautiful day; crisp, with the promise of rain. The sky overhead is a thin, worn grey, and inhaling, Eva thinks she can pick up on the sharp scent of ozone; can hear the rumble of distant thunder.

She's sitting on the steps to her front door, enjoying the stillness before the storm when a bright red ball flies right at her face. Startled, Eva blocks with her elbow and the ball smacks back into the concrete pavement and bounces.

"Hey! Nice one!"

She looks over at the boy. His dark hair is cut short, and his eyes are the clear, unmarred grey of the sky above them. A knee's scabbed over, but that doesn't seem to bother him and then he grins and there's something almost infectious about it; energetic, even.

"What's your name?"

She wonders if he'll go away; wonders if she wants him to. There's Stacey and June, but most of the time, Eva's left to her own devices, and her big sister's away and it can feel awfully lonely at times, and she wonders what she feels when she looks at this gangly boy. A strange, crackling sense of potential, maybe, as if something in her recognises him, as if something in her says,  _this boy could be as essential to you as breath, he could be your friend._

"I'm Eva," she says. "Eva Rosalene."

He scoops up the ball. "Well, I'm Neil Watts. D'you want to play with me?"

For a moment, she's not just Eva Rosalene, child; she seems to see everything at once—Neil, smirking as he tells her he's scored a date with the hottest girl in their year, a warm afternoon on the campus lawn as they discuss plans for the future, Neil opening his heart to her over ice cream, Neil pulling off his jacket as he agrees to stay the night, the first handfuls of dirt scattered over a coffin.

All these and more flash through Eva Rosalene's mind in the span of a few heartbeats, and she can't even begin to put words to this knowledge, or how she has come by it.  _Memory,_  something in her whispers, but even that voice fades into silence.

They are in a car, pulled up along the road shoulder, and Neil is kissing her, or she is kissing him, and it doesn't matter, because it is heated and desperate and mutual; their own candles against the dark of human existence.

They are sleeping in the same bed, and she curls her hand about his waist, pulling him against her, breathing in his scent, taking comfort from his closeness; from the tactile warmth of his presence.

He's brushing a soft kiss against her cheek as he rises to make breakfast, the sunlight falling in bright sheets through the window and Eva groggily wonders if she should have drawn the curtains.

But all this falls away, and in this moment, Eva Rosalene is only a child, and she looks over at him—dark eyes to storm grey—and eventually nods and says, "Yeah. Okay."

* * *

"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing."

— _Macbeth_ , Shakespeare: Act 5, Scene 5, lines 22-28

**Author's Note:**

> Done as a gift for ravenousbee for the Sigcret Santa Gift Exchange. Hope you love this! [And yet another WIP bites the dust!]


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